I'm getting used to the visionary and challenging experience of Death Stranding. I made peace with long gameplay sessions completely separated by story. Playing DS is like immersing in an alien virtual world. Delivering packages through mountains, rivers, deserts etc, by walking or by driving is somehow engaging. You become familiar with places and people. You have to accurately plan your journey, strategy is important; you can choose different approaches. Crossing rivers or mountains? The long easy way or the more difficult short way? And so on. Lately I got a new gadget, cableway for traveling in the mountains or crossing canyons and big rivers. You can also build roads and generators for supplying energy to vehicles. You have to carefully choose the items to carry: weapons for humans or weapons for ghosts? Ladders? Ropes? Regenerator spray? Building materials? Which exoskeleton, the fast one or the powerful one? Motorcycle or wagon? Do I need cableway or asphalt machine? And so on.Yesterday I tried the shorter way through iced high mountains! Ahahah! What a fool! How exhausting! Snow is worse than rain! Not suggested! Ahahah! Such freedom of action is beautiful! The virtual world is so deserted but even so lively at the same time! One day I was running too fast, I fell in a deep canyon; I found a source of toxic vapors from the subsoil and died! Ahahah! It's a pity that there is no night-day cycle! Developers didn't care much about aesthetics (short budget?), forget the beauty of Shadow of the Colossus, but overall atmosphere is good.
Even if challenges are not my primary focus in games, I must admit that challenges and mechanics are at the state of art and very original. So far superior and more compelling than usual challenges in mainstream action games. Thoughtful and romantic challenges: you alone against an inhospitable world where it's continuosly raining cats and dogs and entropic processes are accelerated. I can feel something of epic. Special mention to Radiohead-like music, reminding of Life Is Strange soundtrack; so evocative, able to underline epic and drama of the experience!
It's a pity that Sam/Norman Reedus is one of the less interesting avatars ever! He almost never speaks! He is just a body for carrying packages! Lovers of male bodies will like DS! There is also a cut scene with clear homosexual suggestions! I cannot say more, no spoilers here! I prefer female bodies but it seemed right to me to underline this latent aspect of the game.It's not just Sam/Reedus, the acting of the different characters is not particularly brilliant. Except in the begining, in the first two powerful hours full of very good cinematic scenes. As I said in previous posts, in the middle of the game cut scenes become rare, just fillers between challenges. They are not so good from a cinematographic point of view. People are crying too much, too many tears! Building drama by means of such trivial trick is not good! It seems that gamers are considered "children of a lesser god", less smart than cinema audience, so that you can offer them low profile movies! I'm offended! :-)Unfortunately challenges are the core of the game, narration is just a filler, except in the beginning; and maybe even in the end, we'll see. The story of Fragile in the end of episode 3 gives good kick to narration, you can see long cut scenes with good content. I can say no more, sorry!
However DS is able to continuosly surprise players! Suddenly and unexpectedly I found myself propelled into a visionary war-like experience, where you have to shoot enemies in third person view! I can say no more, no spoilers here! Well, I appreciated such variation of gameplay, I think that interactivity and challenges must be as varied as possible in games. Mechanics are not the best ever, but I liked the visionary background. Sorry, I can say no more! I dont know if it's just a cookie for lovers of shooters, or if such scene has meaningful narrative role. We'll see.
DS is a long experience different form any other game I played in the past. That makes beautiful and exciting my nights of play. DS is still a mistery to me, I like discovering its secrets, his surprises fascinate me; it's like exploring something new and refreshing despite of pros and cons.Stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment